With our team reunited after a week (or for some two) apart. We had a full house of tinkerers ready to tackle our puppet theater. The previous session we had determined two very different components for our project (puppets and a theater for them to act on) as well as a list of some solid suggested features needed for the both. For example, the theater needed a stage, curtains and a setting. The puppet(s) needed joints and movable parts that could be controlled by the kiddeos (ideally without being seen).

Clearly two different groups were going to emerge. As collaborators we often try to anticipate the direction a group will take a project to help us prepare rudimentary designs that may help inform the kiddeos ideas leaving us with lots of time to tinker with the more complicated and often exciting parts a project may encounter as it progresses. Other times the designs are completely kid driven and we are often left trying to sort and sift through their sometimes overwhelming ideas in effort to capture everyone's collective desire in a plan that reflects what they want and will (hopefully) work.

This was exactly the case presented to us on our third session by this very bight and headstrong group of builders. Before opening circle was even over our previous sketches were rendered best recycled. So we broke into two groups the theater design capturing all but two members of the groups attention.

Theater design: kids ended up deciding that puppets would be controlled from below the stage with setting changes raised and lowered from a fly gallery above.

Puppet design: the puppet team explored how to control moveable joints from both above and below. The team was worried about the strings for a marionette getting all tangled.

After we design we get to building.

And finish the day by sharing stories of personal struggles and others being awesome!